Vacation, Part II

There are a lot of reasons to be sad today (Rob is gone, I have to go back to work tomorrow, and my neighbor upstairs is blasting "Love Hurts" on loop), but I've chosen productivity over wallowing. Like I said in the last post, after the kitchen flooded, Rob and I took off for Copenhagen. It's a nice place, smaller and older than Berlin, with more bikes, more wind, and less dirt (maybe because of the wind). It reminded me of Vienna, but a little less pompous. The light always seemed like early morning. Although Rob and I both have a tendency toward culinary tourism (I'd take a restaurant over a museum any day), we didn't go to Denmark for the pastries. That didn't keep them from being a highlight of the trip, especially because we had to guess what they would be. I did learn that the pastry we know as a danish is called wienerbrod, or Viennese bread, in Denmark (Tangent! Interesting Watson fellowship proposal: pastry naming and local identity - the berliner, which is not a berliner in Berlin, the danish, which isn't a danish in Denmark. Ten points if you know other examples of this). Here, Rob is trying a different kind of pastry which turned out to be like Danish Puff with some kind of custard filling. Mmmmmm.

I think most businesses weren't closed for religious reasons, but because everyone in Copenhagen was at the huge, crowded, wonderful Easter flea market (below). It was like the non-food part of Naschmarkt in Vienna, only indoors, on two stories, and you had to pay to get in. Lots of beautiful antique furniture (too bad I'm not rich enough to ship that sort of thing home), dishes, jewelry, and junk.

Because Copenhagen is small (geographically) and the weather was sunny (if not quite balmy), we decided to walk and skip the public transportation. Because of Easter, a lot of businesses were closed, including the Carlsberg brewery. Rob was sad, both because of the free beer the guidebook promised (long walk for nothing) and because the brewery is located on the only hill in town.Luckily, the brewery is also near a nice park, so we walked around and relaxed in the grass and found this tree hung with lots of baby pacifiers and ribbons. Anyone know what that's about?

On the way back to the hotel, we decided to share a Danish hot dog from one of the many hot dog trailers. There are about 30 different variations on the hot dog at any given trailer. One of these is a baguette-shaped roll with a hole in the middle for the hot dog (like in Vienna, but smaller, and, in the end, not as tasty). Unfortunately, I let Rob hold the camera while I tried it.

Copenhagen is really close to Malmo, Sweden, and connected by a bridge and a tunnel, so we decided to take a day trip. The old city looked a lot like Copenhagen, only shorter.

The thing that was supposed to be different in Malmo was that shops were supposed to be open. But Rob was disappointed again when we tried to go to the first H&M (Swedish fashion exporter) we saw.Later, we did find one that was open - turned out to be just like H&M everywhere else, only perhaps more expensive. Like Copenhagen, Malmo has a castle, but it was not at all what I expected after all the castles I've seen elsewhere in Europe. This was a very functional (not decorative) and old castle, with a moat, but more like a fortress. It houses a sort of natural history museum.Luckily, it also houses a cafe, because Rob really needed some coffee at that point.From there, we walked out to see the famous "Twisting Torso," the tallest building in Sweden (and the only skyscraper in Malmo), which is a luxury high-rise that turns 90 degrees from base to top. It is very tall and skinny, and looks (to me) a bit unstable.

Rob was impressed by the extreme height.

You can tell it's really a luxury building because it too has a moat. We wanted to see the view from the top, but we only made it as far as the lobby before we were stopped by a not-very-apologetic doorlady.
Between the twisting torso and the ocean are a few hundred yards of luxury low-rise condos which made me suspect that Ikea has gone into urban planning. The coast was very rocky, with a couple of tiny harbors where a few yachts were parked. Beautiful, but windier than in town. If you squint, you can see Malmo in the distance behind Rob, and to the right part of the bridge that connects it with Denmark.

The next day, we met Inge Lise. Her grandfather was my grandfather's cousin, so we're cousins of some kind but neither of us knew just what kind. She's sort of the genealogist of the family, and had been to visit Nebraska back in the 70's, when Papa drove a tiny car and still had hair. She took us around a little, to the top of the round tower for a view of the city and to the Rosenborg castle.
The Rosenborg castle is in the middle of Copenhagen, and has a moat as well as big parks and rose gardens that would definitely be prettier if it weren't about to rain. As Inge Lise predicted, it didn't really rain until the next day. It was Easter, and our last day in Copenhagen, so Rob and I splurged and had a pricey but delicious Easter brunch. Unfortunately, the combination of bad salmon from lunch the day before and the endless buffet gave me an upset stomach. We did walk out to the free city of Christiania, but I had to take some breaks along the way.
We made it out, but as is probably the case with all hippie communes, it wasn't very lively in the rain. We walked through, but didn't see anything scandalous and agreed that we would have found it more interesting when we were teenagers.
On the way back, it rained harder and I felt worse, so I only got this picture of the other castle while we were crossing the street.
On the way to the airport, I noticed this ad, which reminded me of the Koelsch beer ad in Cologne. This is for milk, though. Haven't found a translation, but I think it says to drink half a liter of milk a day to live long (or well).
We finally made it back to Berlin in the middle of the night, and swore to never fly Easy Jet again. Inga had moved out over the Easter break, and took a lot with her. It's strange that she's gone (stranger still that she took the grilling spices but not her bathrobe), but Julian is still away and Max, the new roomie, hasn't moved in yet, so I'm enjoying the peace and quiet. I'm also getting a little worked up about how soon this whole thing is going to be over. I only have two and a half months left, and there are still a lot of places to go and things to do.